Taxan Valuevision 1910 TCO 99

...space they swallow, but the Taxan didn't overstep the mark in this respect, with a cabinet depth of 460mm or about 18 inches; not much more than that of a typical 17-inch unit.

The whole thing weighed 22kg, which is again about right for its size, and the tilt/swivel stand provided with it was able to hold the cabinet at the desired angle without it slipping out of position.

For this sort of money you aren't going to ...
...have to go back to Taxan for repairs, but hopefully this won't happen often.

Taxan has stuck to a tried and tested formula for its external controls, which simply consist of a set of four buttons below the bezel for navigating the OSD and selecting and adjusting items. The OSD itself is easy to understand and move around in, and contains all the necessary settings, including rotation and pin-balance, which sometimes get left out of ... more

For a 19-inch monitor, the ValueVision is certainly priced to sell, which is half the battle. That said, cheaper monitors can be rather disappointing when it comes to everything else, so we thought we'd come back to the ValueVision for a closer look.

The first thing to watch out for with 19-inch monitors is how much desk space they swallow, but the Taxan didn't overstep the mark in this respect, with a cabinet depth of 460mm or about 18 inches; not much more than that of a typical 17-inch unit.

The whole thing weighed 22kg, which is again about right for its size, and the tilt/swivel stand provided with it was able to hold the cabinet at the desired angle without it slipping out of position.

For this sort of money you aren't going to get trimmings like a USB hub in the stand, or integrated speakers or indeed BNC inputs, so we weren't surprised or disappointed to find none of these things. We were also expecting a captive signal cable, since this is cheaper to produce than a detachable one, and again, our expectations were confirmed. Obviously if it breaks internally the unit will have to go back to Taxan for repairs, but hopefully this won't happen often.

Taxan has stuck to a tried and tested formula for its external controls, which simply consist of a set of four buttons below the bezel for navigating the OSD and selecting and adjusting items. The OSD itself is easy to understand and move around in, and contains all the necessary settings, including rotation and pin-balance, which sometimes get left out of cheaper displays, and colour tuning with preset temperatures and an RGB-adjustable channel should you need to create your own custom temperature.

You can get usable results out of this tube at 1280 x 1024, but as per usual everything's rather small and fine focus isn't at its best, although you do get an 85Hz vertical refresh. The best compromise between resolution and readability comes at 1152 x 864, which gives you text and screen objects large enough to see without leaning towards the screen, and reasonable overall focus.

The geometry was fine initial adjustments, and the image was bright but not uncomfortably so. The voltage regulation worked properly too, so the borders of the picture didn't move when large windows were opened and closed. On the whole, image quality was pretty decent - not quite up there with the best, but for this kind of money it was certainly good enough.

Verdict
Neither the build quality, the range of available controls or the image characteristics have suffered noticably to get the price down, which makes the ValueVision a pretty good deal.

£235
 

...less